Reidispongiolide A (1), isolated by D Auria et al. from the sponge Reidispongia coerulea, which was collected off the coast of New Caledonia, [1] and sphinxolide B (2) [2] are representative members of a structurally unique family of cytotoxic marine macrolides.[3] Their interaction with actin in the cell cytoskeleton leads to microfilament destabilization, and they show potent antiproliferative activity (for example, IC 50 = 0.04 and 0.01 mg mL À1 against human colon carcinoma HT29) and the ability to circumvent multidrug resistance. This profile makes these macrolides valuable molecular probes in cell biology and promising lead compounds for the development of novel chemotherapeutic agents that target actin. [4,5] Their structures comprise a highly oxygenated 26-membered macrolactone, containing a d-lactone ring, and appended with an elaborate side chain at C25 which terminates in an N-vinylformamide group. Through the combination of degradation fragment [2d, 6, 7] synthesis and detailed NMR analysis, we determined the stereochemistry of the entire reidispongiolide macrolide to be that shown in 1 (Scheme 1).[8] Subsequently, Rayment and co-workers [9] reported the X-ray crystal structure of actin-bound reidispongiolide A, assigning the complete configuration and revealing its intriguing mechanism of microfilament destabilization. The sparse natural supply of the reidispongiolides [1] and sphinxolides [2] makes total synthesis of paramount importance, not only to support further biological applications but also to enable structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies. Herein, we report the first total synthesis of reidispongiolide A based on a highly convergent modular assembly process that evolved from our stereochemical analysis groundwork. [7a, 8] As outlined in Scheme 1, our synthetic strategy for reidispongiolide A involves a late-stage introduction of the C30-C36 side-chain segment 3, which incorporates the sensitive N-vinylformamide functionality, through a suitable aldol coupling with the macrolactone aldehyde 4. We elected to disassemble the macrolide 4 into key subunits 5 (C14-C29) and 6 (C4-C13) based on an envisaged second aldol coupling to introduce the stereocenter at C13. The remaining subunit 7 Scheme 1. Synthetic strategy for reidispongiolide A (1) that involves the key building blocks 3, 5, and 6.